by Tom Clancy
Harrison took more than a little comfort in knowing that the elite ESU personnel were trained to respond to virtually any crisis; if something bad went down, they would be able to meet the challenge of coping with it head-on. But response wasn’t the same as prevention, and Oklahoma City loomed darkly over his thoughts tonight, reminding him that it only took a second for hundreds of innocent lives to be lost.
“Is that Dick Clark?” Rosetta said, pointing toward a sudden swirl of activity near the stand. “By those TV cameras over there?”
He sat forward, craning his head.
“Don’t think so,” he said. “That guy looks too old.”
“You never know, Bill. He’d have to be around seventy by now.”
“Dick Clark stopped aging at thirty,” he said. “Unlike your poor bedraggled husband, whose energies are on the wane as we speak, and who will be sleeping like a rock the moment his head hits the pillow tonight.”
“Is that so?”
“My days as a late-night party animal are behind me, sweetheart,” he said.
She put her hand on his thigh and let it rest there, a slanted little smile on her lips, her eyes glinting in the way that never failed to make his throat tighten and his heart skip a beat.
Tonight was no exception.
He looked at her with surprise, catching his breath.
“Like I said, old man, you never know,” she said.
11:45 P.M.
“Yo, cuz, you got jelly donuts?”
The bearded vender lifted his eyes from his wristwatch and shook his head.
“How ’bout custard?”
“No more.”
Des Sanford looked over at his friend, Jamal. Jamal looked back at him and shrugged. Both teenagers were wearing hooded sweatshirts with knit caps underneath. Both also happened to be very confused by this white guy who you’d think would be interested in making a buck here tonight, but didn’t seem to have shit to sell. A minute ago they’d smoked a little ganja, caught themselves a buzz, and then zipped straight over to his stand, figuring something sweet would go down fine. Maybe a couple coffees to get the chill out of their bones.
Des rubbed his hands together for warmth. Why the fuck couldn’t New Year’s be in July?
“Don’t be tellin’ us there ain’t no chocolate sprinkle,” he said. “I mean, you gotta have chocolate sprinkle.”
“Sold out,” the vender told the teenagers, glancing at his watch.
Des poked a finger under his cap and scratched his forehead. He swore to God, if he lived to be a hundred, he’d never get these white dudes, didn’t matter if they came from the Bronx or had some kind of foreign accent like this one. Man has himself some prime turf, southeast corner of Forty-second Street, right under the building with the big screen, right where the ball gonna come drop-pin’ from the roof any minute now, and what’s he do but stand there concentrating on his watch like he had someplace better to be, telling people he’s out of this, that and the other thing.
Des leaned forward and read the name on his vender’s license.
“Julius, m’man, maybe you oughtta try tellin’ us what you do have. ”
The vender nodded vaguely toward the sparse row of plain and powdered donuts on the upper shelf of his cart.
Des blew air through his compressed lips, making a small sound of disgust. Not only did the donuts look stale, but he was positive they had come out of a box.
“Eats like that, you know, we coulda bought at the deli,” he said. “Sign on your stand be sayin’ fresh donuts. I mean, how you be cleaned out when it ain’t even midnight yet?”
The vender looked at Des, his blue eyes holding on him, seeming to stare right through him. Then he reached under the counter.
Des looked at Jamal again, puzzled, wondering if he’d gone too far razzing the guy, if this was some kind of crazy mutha had a problem with black people, maybe kept a piece tucked away under his apron just in case somebody mouthed off to him. Jamal was asking himself the same thing, and was about to suggest that they move on when the vender’s hand reappeared holding a brown paper bag.
“Here,” he said, stuffing the handful of donuts on display into the bag, then crunching the bag shut and holding it out to Des. “No charge.”
Des looked at him tentatively.
“You sure, man?”
The vender nodded and stretched his hand farther out over the counter, shoving the bag against Des’s chest.
“Take them,” he said. “Last chance.”
Des grabbed the donuts. He had a feeling that if he hadn’t, the dude would have just opened his hand and let the bag drop to the sidewalk.
“Uh, thanks,” he said, and glanced up at the Astrovision Screen. It showed a closeup of the mayor, who was giving his rap from that stand in the middle of the street, working up to his countdown, talking all kinds of shit about New York City being an example to the world, millions of people in Times Square, everybody having a good time, everybody getting along, peace, brotherhood, togetherness, and please don’t drink and drive. Not a word in his speech about donut guys that didn’t have any donuts, but what the hell, this was a party. Below his face, the time was being displayed in bright red numbers, 11:50 now, ten minutes and counting to the Big 21.
Des had to admit, he felt pumped.
“C’mon, let’s move back some. I wanna get a good look at the ball when it come down,” he said, turning to Jamal.
Jamal nodded. He looked at the vender, acknowledged the freebie he’d given them with a halfhearted little dip of his chin, then started walking off with his friend.
The vender watched them brush against a woman in a black leather coat and beret who was approaching the stand, pause to apologize while eyeing her up and down, then vanish into the crowd.
“Enjoy yourselves,” he muttered.
11:47 P.M.
Shouldering past the two black kids, Gilea moved up to the donut stand and looked across the counter at Akhad.
“Are you sold out?” she asked.
He nodded. “I was just closing.”
“Too bad,” she said.
“There should be other venders,” he said. “They also sell donuts.”
“I’ve seen them around.”
“Good,” he said. “Then you shouldn’t have any problems.”
“No, I shouldn’t.”
She stuffed her hands into her coat. In her left pocket was a radio transmitter roughly the size and shape of a lipstick tube—and identical to one Akhad was carrying as a fail-safe. One clockwise twist would send a coded-frequency signal to a receiver/initiator inside the donut stand, detonating the sheets of C-4 explosive sandwiched between thin aluminum panels along its front, back, and sides. Separate blocks of plastique totaling over a hundred pounds in weight had been packed behind the doors of its storage compartments. In addition to the C-4, the compartments contained thousands of tiny nails and ball bearings. Dispersed in every direction by the blast, the shrapnel would buffet the area for hundreds of yards, exponentially compounding the destructive force of the explosion, chewing through human flesh like buckshot through tissue paper. While an independent electronic blasting cap had been wired to each compartment, all of the wires threaded into the same firing system, so that the ignition of the charges—and the release of their deadly projectiles—would be simultaneous.
And that would only be the beginning.
Gilea checked the watch on her right hand, her opposite hand still in her pocket, the transmitter still nestled within it.
“Almost midnight, I’d better be on my way, ” she said, her eyes meeting Akhad’s. “Thank you for your help.”
“Sure,” he said. “Good night.”
She smiled, turned, and strode toward the south side of the block.
Akhad took a deep breath and checked his own watch. He himself would be leaving the booth in exactly two minutes—and that was none too soon.
He wanted to be as far away as possible when the area turned into a shrieking,
flaming pit out of deepest hell.
11:48 P.M.
“... take our viewers live to Times Square, where Fox TV’s own Taylor Sands has been in the thick of things all night. Taylor, what’s it like out there?”
“Jessica, the temperature might be dropping fast, but that hasn’t kept the number of people in the square from going up—and to quote the Buster Poindexter song, they are feeling hot, hot, hot. A few moments ago, a representative from the NYPD told me the crowd has exceeded all predictions, and may well top three million in the final count ... and let me tell you, from where I stand, it is virtually impossible to see an inch of pavement that isn’t occupied. Yet everybody seems to be having fun, and so far there have been only a few minor incidents requiring police attention.”
“Taylor, the mayor really seems to be—”
“I’m sorry, Jessica, could you repeat that? As you can probably hear, people already have their noisemakers out, and it’s getting a little hard to hear you ...”
“I was just saying that the mayor appears to be playing the part of master of ceremonies to the hilt.”
“That’s right. He’s been saying a few words to the crowd before leading them in the final New Year’s countdown of the century, and just moments ago put on a red-and-gold foil top hat with crepe paper streamers. The word is, incidentally, that he’s going to be joined onstage by the legendary musician and songwriter Rob Zyman, whose song ‘The World’s A’ Gonna Change’ became the anthem of an entire generation, and who, as you may know, rose to stardom in the streets of New York’s own Greenwich Village. Also expected is a reunion between Zyman and his occasional collaborator Joleen Reese. This promises to be amazing!”
“It sure does, Taylor. Thanks for your report. We’re going to cut away for a brief commercial break, but will be back to resume our live coverage of New Year’s 2000 in just sixty seconds ...”
11:50 P.M.
Sadov reached the end of the tiled corridor in the IND station at Fiftieth Street and Rockefeller Center, then climbed the stairs leading up to the sidewalk, taking his time, in no rush to arrive at his destination. He had gotten off an uptown B train fifteen minutes earlier and lingered on a bench on the subway platform, pretending to wait for a connecting train until he felt it was time to move. If he had chosen to, he could have come by one of the lines that ran closer to Times Square—but Gilea had pointed out that security would be tighter in and around those stations, and there was no sense taking unnecessary chances.
He saw a strip of night sky between the crenellated rooftops beyond the stairwell exit, and then cold air came sweeping over him and he was out on the street.
Even here, two long avenues west of the square, he could hear shouts of excitement and whoops of laughter bubbling up above muddier layers of sound, a dense torrent of human voices rushing between the high office towers on either side of him.
He turned north on Sixth Avenue, then continued at an unhurried pace, his leather jacket creaking a little as he adjusted the shoulder strap of his athletic bag. The bag was dark blue nylon, very inconspicuous. Still, the police had set up sawhorses at the intersections, and it was likely they would conduct spot inspections of carry bags and packages. The plan, therefore, was for Sadov to wait outside the checkpoint at the northeast corner of Seventh Avenue and Fifty-third Street until the primary explosion drew their attention elsewhere. Only then would he briefly join the surging press of bodies and drop his bag. At the same time, Gilea’s man Korut, along with two of Nick Roma’s soldiers, would do the same at the other three corners of the square. Each of their satchel charges was on a ten-minute time-delay fuse and would detonate at the height of the crowd’s confusion.
Those within the kill zones would be ripped to shreds. Hundreds, possibly thousands, more would be injured during the pandemonium, trampled by the stampeding herd of humanity. And the screams of the dead and the dying would echo over streets awash in blood.
Sadov swung west on Fifty-third and looked up ahead, where a blue-and-white police barricade stood crosswise in the middle of the street, a huddle of uniformed officers around it, laughing, talking, standing with their arms crossed over their chests and very little to do but collect their overtime pay.
Slowing in the long shadow of an office building, Sadov checked his watch. In mere minutes, he thought, the policemen would have their hands full of things to do. Whatever the final number of casualties in the bombings, this night would be remembered ten centuries later, as the world turned toward yet another new millennium, and common minds filled with dread of things to come, and the leaders of nations yet unborn wondered what sins might have inspired such awesome rage.
11:51 P.M.
On loan from the FAA at the police commissioner’s personal request, the bomb detection team had brought two of their best dogs to the scene. Fay, whose name was an obvious homage to her organizational keepers, was a five-year-old black Labrador that had sniffed out suitcase bombs at Kennedy International Airport four times in the past two years. Hershey, a Doberman retriever, had used his phenomenally sensitive nose to set off a red light at the Republican Convention the previous summer, preventing a catastrophic explosion by alerting security personnel to a chunk of A-3 plastic that had been concealed in a vase of flowers on the speaker’s platform. Though generally regarded as the smartest dog on the team, Hershey’s greatest weakness was a tendency to be sidetracked by the smell of chocolate ... hence, the origin of his name.
Agent Mark Gilmore had been with the FAA’s civil security branch for a dozen years, and had been a canine handler almost half that long. He loved the dogs and knew their outstanding capabilities, but was also highly sensitive to their limitations. And from the outset, he had been concerned that his current assignment just wasn’t doable.
The bomb dogs were most effective at searching relatively closed-in areas, or at least areas in which distractions could be kept to a minimum, such as jetliner cabins, airport baggage holds, hotel rooms, and, as in the case of the Republican convention, empty auditoriums. The more sensory input they were hit with, the greater the chance they would be fooled or simply wander off track. Large spaces with open access and lots of hubbub diminished their ability to fix on the minute olfactory traces of explosive chemicals. Times Square on a normal night would be tricky; tonight, when it seemed like a cross between a mosh pit and the Mardi gras, it would be overwhelming—a hectic, blaring jumble of sights, sounds, and odors.
Basic movement was another difficulty. Earlier in the night, when the crowd was much thinner, the dogs still had had some roving room. Now, however, the crush was all but impenetrable and they were getting stressed. Which meant keeping them on a short leash, and narrowing their range to cordoned-off peripheries, like the restricted zone around the VIP stand.
A further problem for Gilmore was making sure the excited animals didn’t become dehydrated, a condition that could throw their systems into shock, even kill them, within minutes if it were severe enough. At 150 pounds each, they needed plenty to drink to prevent their revved-up canine metabolisms from overheating. Mindful of this, Gilmore had brought several gallon jugs of water in the bomb-detection van parked outside One Times Square, and the panting dogs had led him in that direction twice in the last hour.
He had been standing to one side of the stage, watching Rob Zyman and Joleen Reese take their places beside the mayor, when he noticed Fay tugging at the leash again. This had gotten him kind of disappointed. In these last few moments before the countdown, he had wanted to stick close to the worn but not worn-out folkies for a reason that was, he had to admit, not entirely professional. Gilmore had been a Zyman fan since his older brother had come home with his first album, Big City Ramble, back in the late sixties and, Zyman’s public appearances being few and far between nowadays, he’d figured this might be his last chance to see him perform before he slung his battered Gibson guitar over his shoulder and rambled off down the lonesome highway. Even if all he did was sing a verse or two of “Auld L
ang Syne” in his famed and often-parodied sandpaper rasp, Gilmore had figured it would be an event worth catching.
But then Fay had started panting and tugging, signaling him in no uncertain terms that she needed her radiator filled.
Now he was making for the van with the dogs out ahead of him on about six inches of leash, staying inside the area that had been cleared below the stage, Fay’s tongue hanging halfway to the pavement. Hershey, in this instance, had stayed on the job, his head slouched low, sniffing this way and that, acting as if he’d gone along with his partner just out of canine chivalry.
Suddenly, thirty feet or so from where the van was parked, Hershey stopped dead in his tracks and turned to the left—toward the crowd—whining and barking, his triangular ears angling back against his head. Gilmore looked down at him, puzzled. The dog was frantic. Odder still, Fay was also barking like crazy, facing in the same direction as Hershey, her thirst seemingly forgotten.
Unease creeping up on him, Gilmore added more slack to the leash. The dogs began pulling to the left, hunting further, almost leading him into a collision with the horizontal plank of a police barricade. He made them heel with a sharp command, then steered them to a gap between two sawhorses, his eyes scanning the crowd.
All he could see was people. Thousands and thousands of them, crammed so close together they seemed to form a single amorphous organism. Most were looking at the stage or the Panasonic screen in anticipation of the countdown, now less than ten minutes away.